Iranian Princess Dies

Jun. 02, 1987

LONDON (AP) _ Princess Fatemeh Pahlavi, half sister of the late Shah of Iran, has died in London, the Daily Telegraph reported today. She was 58.

The report did not give the cause of death or say exactly when or where she died. She made her home in London in recent years.

The princess was estranged from the Shah for some time because of her marriage in 1950 to an American, Vincent Lee Hillyer. The couple married in a civil ceremony at Civitavecchia, Italy, on April 13 that year and in a Moslem religious ceremony in Paris the following May 10.

Her husband converted to Islam and assumed the additional name of Ali. They had three children, one of whom, Rana, was killed in an accidental fall in 1954.

The princess's first marriage ended in divorce in 1959. In the same year, she married Iran's air force commander, Gen. Muhammad Khatami, and they had two sons. The general was killed in a flying accident in 1975.

Princess Fatemeh was born in Tehran on Oct. 30, 1928, and was the youngest child of Reza Shah and his fourth wife, Esmat Dowlatshahi.

Reza Shah was an army officer who seized power in a coup in 1921. He was proclaimed Shah of Persia in 1925, and the country's name was officially changed to Iran in 1935.

He was succeeded by his son, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who died in exile in Egypt in 1980 after the 1979 revolution.